“Maybe just…lure it back to the field that way?” I said to Charlie. “But from further away? Maybe? Step back a bit?”
“You want me to walk backward with a bag of potatoes and a pig coming at me, all the way to a random field?” Charlie said, wide-eyed, and then, before I could answer, “That’s quite a good idea.”
The pig began to toss its head, losing its focus on the sack of potatoes and careening into a tower of crates. Apples cascaded everywhere. The pig really didn’t like that. The mood shifted; even the committee members started to look a little perturbed.
I offered to take the potato sack and switch places with Charlie, but she insisted—quite irritably, I thought—that she could handle it.
And then the pig ran at her.
I moved before I was even aware I was moving. It wasn’t smooth or heroic—I stumbled over chairs, tripped between legs and root vegetables. But I got to her just in time and threw her flat against the barn wall.
I wrapped myself around her, putting my back to the pig, bracing myself for impact. Charlie shrieked. She was tremblingin my arms, her thick, dark hair in my face, her elbow rammed into my stomach.
But impact never came. I was not impaled from behind by a stressed pig. I was just pressing a beautiful woman against a wall, my arm braced above her head, for no reason at all.
This is weird to write about. But I said I’d write about everything. And this was definitely something.
Charlie looked up at me, breathless, her hair a mess, and her expression wasn’t a carefully contrived smile or a bright blank look, it was bare and open. Her eyes said,I can’t believe you helped me.
Or something like that. I don’t know. But there was a complexity of emotion beneath the panic in her expression that I related to so deeply, I felt it somewhere in my gut. I looked into her eyes and saw someone who knew that bad things happen and had gone a very long time without anybody standing in her corner.
Charlie looks beautiful when she’s faking a smile, but she looks even more beautiful when she’s not faking anything. And she was pressed against me, each breath of hers moving me, too—that’s how close we were. Body to body, hot skin beneath rumpled clothes.
Up until this point, I’d ignored the fact of Charlie’s body altogether. Even when she was wandering through the kitchen in a towel or painting her toenails bare-legged on the sofa. Even when she was getting changed into her pajamas on the other side of a door and I could hear the slow swish of silk moving over her skin.
Or, OK, I’dmostlyignored it.
But with the adrenaline, and her hot breath on my collarbone,and the bare, almost curious look on her face, that suddenly became completely impossible.
Anyway, someone shoutedbravoaround about then, and everyone started clapping, which snapped me right out of it. I turned to look over my shoulder. The pig, inexplicably, was gone.
“Went out that way,” Kim said, pointing helpfully to the only door.
Charlie shifted a little underneath me and I pulled back instantly, embarrassed that I hadn’t moved sooner. She was still breathing heavily, and her pupils were dilated. She touched the back of her head—I had done my best to soften the blow, but it had definitely hit the wall as I had shoved her out of harm’s way.
She asked me if I was OK.
“Me? What? I’m fine. AreyouOK?”
She lifted a hand to my forehead and frowned. “You’re hot.”
I stepped back. “I’m fine.”
It came out too gruffly. She started a bit, like I’d jolted her. Someone—Karyn, maybe—said I was a hero, and everyone agreed, and lots of people patted me on the back. I watched as Charlie rearranged her expression into a perfectly calm smile.
“So sorry for the disturbance to our first committee night—but at least we made it memorable!” Charlie said to everyone. “I think we’d better call it a night. I’ll shoot over to the farmhouse and let Marly and Rosie know about the roaming pig, and Jones the local hero will head off in pursuit of it, see if he can make sure the poor thing doesn’t get lost.”
I snorted with laughter, though I couldn’t tell quite how barbed thelocal herocomment was—was she teasing, or pissed off?
“Feel free to help yourself to more ciders if you want to stay awhile and keep chatting. They’re on the—”
“Shelf over there,” I said, before she could sayon the house. “You all know where the till is.”
Our eyes met. Her lips curved in a slow smile, and I had a feeling that was a real one. A thank-you for being on her team. Teasing, then.
I need to be careful. It’ll help if she keeps the act up—the fake smiles, the cheeriness. I’ve never gone for fakery. I just need to forget the emotion I saw in her eyes as I pressed her to the wall. I need to forget the brief grin on her face when she saidThat’s quite a good idea, like deep down she’s a woman who thrives under pressure. Like there’s a lot more to her than it seems.
I can just about handle a beautiful woman intruding on my new life. But a beautiful,interestingwoman would be very, very bad news.
